A landing fitted to a specific design of ship makes good sense on worlds with enough traffic of specific ship designs to bother with specialization. That might include a dedicated landing bay for a specific model of super-liner, if it's built for landings. Of courseit would make sense for common ships like free traders and far traders. And on a world that is the corporate headquarters for one or more mercenary companies, a Broadsword bay would make sense too.

Dedicated facilities might even be physically separated from the main starport, as long as they're under common traffic control, and have customs and immigration facilities appropriate to the law level.

There might also be civilian variants (with light or no armor) with the same basic hull design. A spherical hull is an economical design for the volume and could be an attractive choice for some. Might make a good tanker, for example. Or maybe as a transport/readymade base for a planetary exploration team?

The Broadsword class is meant for mercenary companies of a certain size. As a ship meant for mercenaries, it's in a spot between noncombatant civilians and combatant military -- mercenaries are combatant civilians. In combat, they have similar status to regular military, but with the expectation that respectable adversaries will honor repatriation bonds for captured mercenaries, and that the agency issuing the repatriation bonds certifies that the mercenaries will themselves be respectable adversaries. Out of combat, they're civilians.

So what does that mean for a Broadsword class ship? Most likely, it means that anyone who encounters them will have a lot of questions to ask. Are you one of ours, one of theirs, looking for business, or just passing through?

And what does that mean for a noncombatant civilian ship that happens to look like a Broadsword class because it shares the same hull configuration? probably lots of questions that the typical commercial operation doesn't want to deal with. A spherical design has points in its favor. Just don't make your spherical ship look too much like a mercenary ship.

The whole concept of the Broadsword is cool. It's like a wish list of macho military space opera fantasy epics. Lots of guns? Check. Armored? Check. Room for some soldiers? Check. But when you get right down to it, it's pretty impractical. If soldiers are being transported from Planet A to Planet B, three parsecs away, and the ticket is let's say security or cadre, how important are the guns and armor? Not very important. You don't need to shoot your way into Planet B to train some backwater army or guard their starport. But you're still paying for the weapons, armor, and other eccentricities of that ship! Worse, it only carries about 30 soldiers. Tickets for a single platoon just don't pay enough to justify the mortgage of an 800-ton, MCr300 starship. It's just not practical.

Switching from a mercenary campaign to a merchant campaign, a free trader or subsidized merchant is hugely practical when it comes to transporting and trading small volumes of goods. Just about every aspect of that starship is a viable part of the investment every time you jump from Planet A to Planet B. It's basically a flying cargo hold and may or may not include weapons, depending on the lethality of the region.

I've run two mercenary campaigns over the years and both used the Broadsword. Why? Because it's cool and it's part of game lore. But both times it required major hand wavyness to justify this impractical ship being held in private ownership. It would make a great deal more sense for corporations to own these ships under certain circumstances: a) high pop region; b) lots of instability and conflict, and c) a lack of governmental cohesion in the area. Under these circumstances, it would make sense to lease Broadswords for short-term operations that require both troop transportation and a necessity to blast your way into and out of the combat zone. Perhaps a community of mercenary companies could use a single Broadsword and each would only lease the ship when performing a strike, commando, star marine or other ticket that required starship firepower. (I guess the players could only perform those kinds of tickets, but the campaign would probably get boring pretty quickly without more variety.)

While the Broadsword is full of questionable design choices, the one that always got me the most was giving staterooms to all the soldiers. Low berths would make a great deal more sense with their reduced life support and tonnage per soldier transported.

The whole concept of the Broadsword is cool. It's like a wish list of macho military space opera fantasy epics. Lots of guns? Check. Armored? Check. Room for some soldiers? Check. But when you get right down to it, it's pretty impractical.

All good points. Definitely cool. Rarely practical.

I think the usual means of transportation for a mercenary force to travel would be a commercial passenger ship, with their gear in the hold as cargo if they travel light enough, or on a separate cargo ship if they are loaded.

That suggests an interesting twist in a mercenary campaign, by the way. Your passenger liner gets you to the conflict world, and your team enjoys the first day of pre-combat rest in startown. But after two more days, the cargo ship with your grav APCs and mass driver artillery is overdue. Your client understands, and can reschedule the operation if necessary, with loss of initiative -- or can offer substitute gear: lots of ordinary trucks, some recoilless rifles and mortars, and a zeppelin for air surveillance. Do you go ahead with the operation?

Of course a Broadsword would be great when you really need those big turrets throwing down light ortillery. And they're very cool.

While the Broadsword is full of questionable design choices, the one that always got me the most was giving staterooms to all the soldiers. Low berths would make a great deal more sense with their reduced life support and tonnage per soldier transported.